DANZ Children’s Book Award

DANZ Children’s Book Award

As the DANZ website (Diversity in Australia and New Zealand) says, diversity is more than just a label – and in 2024, a new children’s book award enters its inaugural year, and to being with, this will be a biennial award. Autistic author, Kate Foster has created this award to promote children’s books with diverse stories – stories about disabled kids, kids of other races, religions, LGBTQIA+ kids, and kids of all genders, amongst many other variables along the diversity spectrum. The DANZ award focuses on diversity in recently published books from authors from Australia and New Zealand – something I am behind, because I think books from Australia and New Zealand across the board need to be celebrated a lot more than they are.

The award will be open to traditional and self-published authors, with no entry fee to remove one of the barriers that many people face when submitting to awards like this. The FAQs give more information, and I am sure as time goes on, there will be much more to share about this award, which looks to be interesting and exciting to watch develop. 2024 will be the pilot year, and to start, books published in 2022 and 2023 will be accepted for the inaugural year.

Now we come to why an award celebrating diversity is important. Diversity in literature means that we get to hear lots of voices, and about lots of experiences in our literature, particularly for children. We all deserve to see ourselves reflected in the books and media that we consume, and promoting diversity in children’s literature, in a prize voted by children, is a great place to start.

There are rules about the books submitted – any relevant book must reflect diversity obviously and be important to the story. These stories must also be authentically written and sensitive – authors who have written a diverse story can submit as long as the work is not offensive, stereotypical, inaccurate, and harmful, and all books submitted should avoid insensitive tropes and representation as this has often occurred in the past and this award seeks to celebrate diversity and what it brings to our lives and literature.

The website states that over the past five years in Australia and New Zealand there has been extensive research that shows an overwhelming lack of diverse representation in children’s literature in these two countries, which is what the DANZ Award is focusing on. The report showed that there was a lack of representation in books for children of all ages, and the books that were published were often by people who didn’t have lived experience, resulting in too many books that relied on harmful stereotypes, which is something that the publishing landscape has been trying to change. Awards like DANZ recognise and celebrate positive and inclusive diversity in children’s literature whilst bringing awareness of these books to a wider audience.

Diverse books can build empathy and understanding, and they are a mirror for people who are marginalised and often not seen in the media – but the good news is that a lot of this is changing in many ways. The DANZ award will encourage marginalised authors to create, and to encourage bookstores and libraries to stock these books chosen by a diverse cross-section of judges. The DANZ award is going to bring Australia and New Zealand in line with diverse book awards, and it won’t be competing with or replacing other children’s book awards in Australia. Instead, it will complement them and give diverse voices the spotlight they need.

The key dates for the inaugural award are as follows at time of publishing:

KEY DATES (subject to change)
​

1. Award launch at ASLA Conference in April 2023
2. Judges invited to apply in May 2023
3. Judges chosen and informed by July 2023
4. Book nominations invited in July 2023
5. Judging to run from August through to October 2023
6. Longlist announced in November 2023
7. Shortlist announced in February 2024
8. Shortlist judging to commence in February 2024
9. Winner announced in April 2024 

The DANZ Awards are seeking donations – to get information on this, or for children from marginalised and diverse backgrounds who want to be a judge, an email can be sent to DANZ, and applications will open on the 1^st of May 2023.

DANZ accepts nominations for diverse books from picture books all the way up to middle grade books, and nominations open on the 1^st of July, with instructions available by email.

I am looking forward to seeing what else comes up, and I hope to give updates as we go, and congratulations to Kate for getting this up and running!